The couch

Today I gave away a couch. Not the comfy couch in my living room that my dogs love to curl up on in a ball and fall asleep for hours on. Not the same couch that they lay on, stretched out on their backs, legs splayed out towards all corners of the world, wagging their tails in effervescent happiness at being alive and allowed to sleep on such a wonderful thing as a couch.

Not that couch.

The couch I gave away was an old couch, a couch that had already been re-invented with a new couch cover sewn for it and put on over the old, stained cushions. The couch with the second cover's fabric chewed off the cushions in the corners. That couch, relegated to a back room when the new comfy couch (with the unchewed cover) was welcomed into our home. That couch was the one I gave away. Finally. After it sat for months in the back room. Taking up space. Space we did not have to give it. The space it took made the back room feel too cluttered.

So, last Sunday, a cool, clear day in the Fall, we dragged it out to the corner of our yard. We put a free sign on it. We live on the corner of a busy road so I was sure someone would see it and want it. They could buy or sew a new couch cover for it and it would be perfectly fine.

A month before this offering, we had put a used toilet by the same corner with a free sign, not really thinking someone would take it but hoping someone would want it so we didn't have to haul it to the junkyard. It was gone in 30 minutes.

The couch sat out majestically in our yard, the flowers blooming brightly across it, holding onto summer just a little bit longer with its pattern of beautiful flowers with sun kissed pink petals and emerald green leaves on a background of pale cream. It sat all day.

I sighed and went to bed. It felt to me as if maybe it was not meant to go. Maybe I should try again to love it. Maybe I was giving it away too easily.

The next day it was still there. The romantic view of my flowered couch, as seen from my cozy living room, was not the same view I saw up close, with the chewed fabric and the spots and stains from a life well lived by a couch that was loved by a house full of messy kids, busy parents, and slobbery dogs. It was no less perfect for its imperfections. But I could see how someone else might not see it in the same light that I did. Memories yet to be made do not cast the same glow to an object as fondly remembered ones tend to.

I went to work Monday and hoped that someone would come by who could overlook its imperfections and see the possibilities, the warm, cozy, comfortable memories it still had left to give. I had all but forgotten it as I drove home, confident someone had found it by now and lifted it into their truck and heart.

As I turned on to our street after work, I saw it still sitting on the corner. Now sitting in the shadows, it was hard to see the beautiful blooms. It looked dingy, old, and alone. My heart sunk. Could no one use this couch that we had moved on from? Just because our relationship had ended did not mean it was not a good couch, a great couch, that just needed some tender loving care to perk it back up again.

I wondered, would I really be able to take it to the dump or would it end up in my back room again if no one else wanted it?

I decided to leave it outside until the end of the week since we were not expecting rain. If it was not gone by then, we would take it to the dump. I tried to harden my resolve. It helped that my family was not willing to bring it back into our house again, and there was no way I could carry it back in myself.

Tuesday came and I left for work, thinking about calling to rent a truck to be able to take the couch to the dump on Saturday. Then the call I was not expecting came. The couch was gone! Just like that. I felt like a weight was lifted from me. Someone else could use our old couch! Someone else saw the potential in it and was willing to give it a home. I felt so good about both giving away our couch and clearing up space in our house that I decided to say goodbye to something every day that was taking up space (physically, mentally, spiritually) and say hello to the rest of my life.

This is the first post of that journey.